6 
The Queensland Naturalist. 
December, 1926 
Climbing* the near-by bluff, our view extends across 
the big swamp to the sea, some mile away, and from 
more prominent positions we might see Point Lookout 
to the North, and Jumpin’ Pin to the South. 
A line of sand-hills borders the ocean with patches 
and chains of vegetation, mostly Banksias and Pandanus. 
The reed-covered swamp, unsafe of passage to any but 
the initiated, is broken by lagoons of varying size, and 
in places at the foot of the bold- line of hills is a more 
or less continuous creek or chain of ponds. 
Beside us here and there, on the more level parts, 
are patches of shell, and in the bottom of the amphi- 
theatre we have just left is a considerable mound of the 
same. This is a ‘ ‘Kitchen Midden,” perhaps one of 
the most lasting evidences there is of .Australia’s orig- 
inal inhabitants. The shell-fish, almost entirely Eugarie, 
have been collected on the outer beach, and carried in 
dilly-bags to the camp: the natives appear not to have 
camped at all frequently near the outer beaches, but 
brought the food by devious and winding wallaby pads, 
skirting deep pools and treacherous bogs, sometimes by 
vibrating bridges of peat, to the sand-hills. 
These middens are to be found* in a number of places 
along this border-line of hills, their presence evidently 
marking the better crossing places. Included in the 
debris, one may always find flakes and splinters of hard 
stone, used as scrapers and knives when opening the 
shell -fish : sometimes larger pieces used for breaking, and 
if one is lucky, a specimen, more often than not broken, 
of one of the native grinding stones for making flour 
from the roots of the “Bung wall ” fern (Blechnum serru- 
latum). 
Every scrap of stone has been carried from other 
places far distant. 
There are numbers of middens on the inner fore- 
shores of the island, and others also at Point Bookout, 
but in all cases the shells are of various kinds, according 
to the varieties and respective Quantities of edible shell- 
fish found in the different localities. 
One wonders when sitting here if some of the blacks 
who made these shell mounds saw with astonishment 
Captain Cook’s vessel, the Endeavour, and what their 
feelings may have been, and so musing, we regretfully 
face our nine-mile tramp to camp, where we all arrive 
tired, perchance, but well pleased with a successful day. 
